


Nightmares

by cr0wgrrl



Series: Outtakes & Extras for ZoyciteM's "Sammy's Time at Stanford" [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abused Sam Winchester, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean Has Self-Esteem Issues, Hurt Sam Winchester, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Temporary Character Death, The Author Regrets Nothing, Time Loop, Trickster Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9135550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cr0wgrrl/pseuds/cr0wgrrl
Summary: Dean, Cas and Jimmy nearly lost Sammy... but as bad as it was... it could always have been worse...(This story is set in ZoyciteM'sSammy's Time At Standforduniverse, and will make no sense if you haven't read it. Which you absolutely should! Nine-tenths of it is glorious kinky fun and sexy fluff, but around Chapter 28, all the dark stuff she'd hinted only briefly at showed up with a vengeance.)[Read this story after Chapter 30 of STaS.]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZoyciteM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoyciteM/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sammy's Time at Stanford](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583) by [ZoyciteM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoyciteM/pseuds/ZoyciteM). 



* * *

 

For the five hundredth time, Dean wonders if maybe he shouldn't just turn back the way he came. Sammy left Dad, left _him_ , in search of a new _normal_ that Dean could never give him, something that came with stupidly expensive books and completely out of his league co-eds and an average income that was more than he and Dad had collectively earned honestly in the last, well, ever.

Sammy doesn't need Dean coming in and ruining any of that for him. And yet here he is about to crash back in. What the hell is he thinking? He should just turn around and leave. Again.

So he does.

It's cowardly, he admits, but so fuckin' what. Sammy leaving once nearly broke him. Sammy turning his back on him a second time? Well. Dean's got his pride. Besides a black '67 Chevy Impala and a trunk full of guns, it's about all he's got, but it'll do.

He swings back by the campus in the spring, thinking that maybe he'll take that risk after all. Maybe if Sam doesn't have anything planned for the summer, maybe the kid would want to take a road trip for old time's sake.

Only Sam's not there. Something grabbed Sam, right off the campus – someone, anyway. He's been missing for months.

John comes to investigate when Dean phones him, but the trail is ice cold. Sammy's gone.

Dean gets drunk with John that night. At least they've got each other.

* * *

_Reset._

* * *

Dean gets as far as a vengeful spirit in Sacramento before he wonders if Sam's gonna have enough money for everything he needs. Keeping up with that rich kid is probably burning through Sammy's resources. California's not cheap, Dean knows that first-hand, and there are probably all kinds of little expenses that Sam's fancy-ass scholarship doesn't cover.

Except the poker game goes awry. Dean ends the evening $600 ahead, but the guy he wins it from isn't too happy about it. He and four of his friends wait outside until the bar closes. When the dust settles, Dean is $650 in the hole, with the added bonus of a black eye and a concussion that keeps him from driving anywhere for 36 hours, by which time he's talked himself out of the trip down south.

What does he have to offer? Sammy deserves better.

He swings back by the campus after November 2 has come and gone – some things are better left forgotten – just to make sure the kid's okay.

Only Sam's not there. Something grabbed Sam, right off the campus – someone, anyway. The trail is cold.

John doesn't answer the phone when Dean calls him. When he finally checks in a week later, he growls and says that Sam probably just ran away from his responsibilities.

Dean swears he'll never stop looking, but fate has other plans in mind. He's dead four months later when the demon he's trying to exorcise crashes the plane they're in.

* * *

_Reset._

* * *

Dean honestly has no intention of swinging by Palo Alto so soon again, at least that's what he tells himself as he's driving back in from Nevada. But he's meeting up with two of Bobby's hunters in Tucson to go after what might be one werewolf and might be a whole pack and he kind of wants to just check in on Sam before that, you know, just in case.

Turns out, it doesn't matter. On his way south, the Impala gets a flat tire outside of Sacramento, and the tire mount on that side gets fucked just enough to delay him until he doesn't have time to stop by the campus. But it's probably just one werewolf, a nice easy candy run. He'll stop by to see Sam afterwards.

Except the guys Bobby sends are green as fuck. Dean bleeds out in an ignominious warehouse that smells like piss and viscera. The last thing he sees before it all goes black is Sam with the fire consuming their house reflected in his eyes, Sam taking his first step towards him, Sam on his first day of school, Sam walking out the door to college, Sam Sam Sa-

* * *

_Reset._

* * *

Dean's got his knife up to the messy twin's throat while the neat twin stands there with his hands out, saying, "We don't know, he never came back to the dorms." Dean doesn't care because Sammy is missing and these rich fucks probably had something to do with it.

Then the tasers land and he's on the ground with some big older dude leaning down over him, saying that the police have been called.

By the time they let Dean go, the trail is cold.

* * *

_Reset._

* * *

There's bloodstains in the cabin and a funeral pyre with a skeleton smoldering on it out back, and the DNA evidence will later confirm everything they don't want to know. But John's long gone. So Dean does what Winchesters do, and hunts down the demon who destroyed his family.

It takes five years to find the man who gave him birth as he drunkenly weaves his way back to his truck after closing time.

It takes five minutes to pistol-whip him from behind and get him trussed up under a tarp on the Impala's floorboards.

It takes five days for him to die.

The first thing Dean does is cut out his tongue and cauterize the wound, because everyone knows the devil lies. The last thing Dean does is take the red-hot poker out of the fire, before he– well. Like father, like son.

Dean's long since cut all ties with the twins, before the curse in his family tree can kill them, too. Same for Bobby, may he continue to live a long and drunken life. But there's one number he's kept.

As John's blood and viscera seep into the floorboards of the drafty hunting cabin, Dean texts Henrik the address to the cabin so he can make sure both of their bodies are burned.

* * *

_Reset._

* * *

Sammy is pale and still, and John's standing over his body laughing. Dean pulls the trigger in front of two pairs of horrified eyes that will never recover from any of it. He doesn't stop until the magazine is empty.

But it's still too late.

* * *

_Reset._

* * *

It takes a month of Gordon and John working him over non-stop, but the Dean that walks out of the cabin isn't the same Dean who walks in.

This Dean sees the error of his ways.

This Dean understands that every bit of love he's felt for his brother, every wrong and sinful feeling, isn't his fault. It's all due to what _Sam_ is. And it's a lie.

This Dean is horrified that he nearly fell for it.

When John leads Sam to the truck, Dean's lying in wait with the needle. He gets to go second, once John's had his fun. Sam never stops crying the whole time.

One down. Fifteen more demon-blooded freaks like Sammy to go.

* * *

The lithe black woman smoothly straddles her golden-haired lover and pretends to smother him with a pillow over his face. When he tries to buck her off, she grins and squeezes her thighs together to hold on.

"Make up your mind already!" She pulls the pillow back and thwacks him over the head with it. "Answer them or don't, flip a coin if you have to, I really don't care, but do _something_ before I start cutting off non-essential body parts. You _know_ summons give me a migraine."

"Rowr!" The blonde man snaps his teeth at her playfully, hands on her hips as he arcs himself up against her. "You love every inch of me and you know it."

She arches an eyebrow at him. "I love some inches of you more than others." Her sharp nails dig into the fleshy parts of his shoulders. "I'm sure there are _some_ I can do without."

"Blasphemy!" he mock-gasps, rolling them over so she is lying on her back, then leaning in to kiss her passionately. Then, with a longing look at her sensually sprawled form, he sighs regretfully and hops off the bed, ignoring her pout.

"But…" he snaps his fingers, dressing himself instantly. "You're probably right." A coin materializes in his hand. "Heads I go, tails the universe can go fuck itself."

He flips the coin.

* * *

Dean wakes up gasping for breath like someone's punched him in the solar plexus. He pushes himself upright from where he's fallen asleep in Castiel's lap, aware that he is probably waking his lover up when they both desperately need sleep but he has to see, has to know–

Sammy is there, alive but unconscious. He looks so fragile in the hospital bed, battered, bruised, shaved, splinted and stitched back together, surrounded by tubes and needles and quietly beeping machinery.

Dean stuffs his knuckles in his mouth to keep from making noise, because Sammy is asleep and the last thing he needs is to get a whiff of the fucked-up nightmares in Dean's head.

Sam is alive. Sam is alive and John is– John is–

And then Cas is there, Jimmy right behind him, holding Dean as he sobs quietly into Cas's shoulder.

They weren't too late. It's going to be okay.

* * *

Outside the hospital room, Henrik gratefully but reluctantly surrenders his post to Luis and Erik. Things are happening elsewhere that he really needs to oversee, but it's hard to bring himself to leave, even knowing that the boys are safe in good hands.

A glint of silver on the ground catches his eye at the end of the hallway and he freezes, nerves still on high alert and ready for anything to be a threat, not matter how absurd the concept. Closer inspection, however, proves it to be merely an ordinary quarter.

He picks it up reflexively for luck, flipping it mindlessly in his palm. Then pauses.

Huh.

Maybe not entirely ordinary after all, he thinks as he slips it into his breast pocket.

It's not every day you find a coin with two heads.

**Author's Note:**

> Henrik the bodyguard is an original character created by ZoyciteM, for whom I've developed quite a soft spot. Zoy was kind enough to let me write an entire fic about him, [Dean Winchester Is a Puzzle, Wrapped in an Enigma, Inside a Taco](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6582562), which I'm actually pretty proud of... And given the 500 words sitting in a different draft document on my computer, he and Bobby are apparently going to make an appearance in another side STaS fic of their own in early 2017! So if you like my little side diversions in Zoy's universe, keep an eye out for it!
> 
> ...and while you're at it, check out the other authors in this collection! There's some good stuff here.


End file.
